Privilege and Burden

Time and again I am reminded, with the Enneagram, that our privilege is our burden and our burden is also our privilege. What I mean by that is that the gifts of Type are also linked with our difficulties. From the outside it can be easy to see the positive aspects of someone else's personality - we think someone else is so confident, outgoing, sensitive, generous - and we don't see the difficulties or drawbacks of being that way. It is easy, for example, to wish we were another Type - it's very common in fact for people, when they realise what Type they are, to wish they had been another. This is, firstly, because we have a tendency to view the situation of others through rose-tinted glasses and secondly, and more importantly, because we understand the difficulties of our own personality because we have lived it. We don't know the inner battles, the pep talks, the thoughts other people have about themselves and their lives because we can't see them. We may admire the integrity of the One, for example, without understanding what that integrity has cost them - and it will have cost them in one way or another because we all pay a price for everything somewhere down the line, including our personality. We may like the forthright directness of the Eight without understanding the trouble it has caused them, or we may love the accommodating, easygoing Nine without understanding the ramifications of being that way or what they are repressing. We are often liked for the very aspects of our personalities that cause us difficulties. It is part of the paradoxical nature of life that we will not only have to reckon, at some stage, with the most problematic aspects of our personalities, but also the most 'attractive' (for want of a better word) and gifted parts. In fact, ironically, we may sometimes have more problems with those aspects of ourself. Those parts of us may be taken advantage of, or they may create jealousy or compromise someone else in some way. We may sometimes use or rely on those parts of ourselves at a time when they may not be appropriate or appreciated. And if we try to articulate our problems with those aspects of ourselves we may not really be understood and so find ourselves alone. We could say that every cloud of our personality has a silver lining and every silver lining has a cloud, even though we may not always be able to see it. With awareness, however, we can transform the clouds into sunlight.